“你好嗎 I Am Fine” – Solo Exhibition by Bosco Law
Visual Arts
Description
Description
The show title is a popular Chinese greeting, “你好嗎“ (pronounced “lee ho ma” in Cantonese), which literally means, “How are you?” However common these words may seem, they reflect an instinctive question that springs to the lips of almost everyone when they meet one another. In-fact, these are the first words most people learn to speak as babies or when one learns a foreign language.
Artist Bosco Law believes that, as one grows older, the response to this question has become almost instinctive and predictable. “I am fine” is now a standard response, irrespective of a person’s real state of mind, masking our true self to conform to societal norms and expectations. All too frequently, real feelings and identities are concealed behind layers of socially acceptable statements and behaviours, such as “I am fine.”
For Law, it is important that prior to parroting “I am fine”, we contemplate the emotions we are struggling with and burying deep into the subconscious. This self-examination will help us arrive at a response that is more nuanced and hence genuine. Works displayed in this show try to reveal the conflict between the appearance on the surface and the reality beneath; they go beyond the superficial into the deeper, more complex layers of the soul.
Bosco Law’s ink paintings are intricate, slowly dotted, in a near-pointillist style, their conceptual meanings often overshadowed by their narrative appearances. For Law, drawing is subconscious. It represents an individual’s free will and independent identity. His artistic practice draws strongly from the process of automatic drawing favoured by surrealist artists. Law’s works characterize the tension between constraint and liberation, and infer issues about identity, power and struggle.
Info
Indoor
Local